A Practical and Historical Exploration for advanced beginner to advanced musicians, ages 18+.

Join us for this four-day immersion in traditional Southern music. The program combines private and group tutorials in various five-string banjo, guitar, fiddle, piano, and mandolin styles with performances, panels, and historical presentations. We welcome musicians age eighteen and over, from advanced-beginners to the most advanced levels.

HANDS-ON STUDY
The program offers not only hands-on study of some of America’s
greatest folk stylists from years past, but guidance in creating
compositions based on time-tested models, amplifying tradition’s
gifts with your own individual talents.

THEMES
Program themes, of interest to the public as well as to players,
encompass rural ragtime and pre-blues sources; topical songs
and lyrical ballads; in-depth explorations of Bill Monroe, Hobart
Smith, and Uncle Dave Macon’s artistry; participatory sing-alongs;
musical learning by note and by ear; alternative tunings; fiddle
tunes; Old World tonalities and New World applications; how
our instruments and music theory work together; how sounds
combine and sometimes clutter; demonstrations of fl at-picking,
down-picking, up-picking, and fingerpicking; and associated
histories of these playing techniques and repertories.